Disclaimer: No I don't own Harry Potter etc. J K Rowling does.
Author's Note: A Draco orientated piece, that will get a lot more interesting. Some possible D/G interactions later on.
Losing A Life
Prologue
In a world where everything is about blood, lineage is what makes you.
I was always proud to call myself a Malfoy. My mother's side of the family was of no consequence except that it was pure.
To be a Malfoy was my sole reason for being, the heir to everything my father worked for. Respected, righteous and rich – yet no one sees me that way anymore.
My 'friends' in Slytherin disowned me this year – now the Malfoy name is in disrepute in the rest of the world's eyes. The school's population in general never cared for me much, as my name was enough to see I had what I wanted. This is no longer true.
Malfoys have no allies other than deatheaters, and with Fudge no longer the Minister of Magic, Lucius Malfoy remains detained in Azkaban, soon to receive the dementors kiss.
These are the reasons I sit alone at the table as we are subjected to another solidarity song by the sorting hat. I watch its cruel lips as its sings. Where's the solidarity for me? There isn't anyone to help out the Malfoys, not even pity for (though we do not want such a thing). There is only hate between us and them. And there are fewer and fewer of us.
After my father is administered the kiss, I will be the only one of Malfoy blood. I'm an only child, I'm sure it explains a lot. Or, rather, my father explains why. He wouldn't want competition in the family, wouldn't want someone who could be better than him. He always considered me weaker, someone to train up towards becoming himself. And at the same time he expects me to be as good as him. I won't live up to that now; I'm sure it is better not to be like him – in case I would meet the same fate. I vow to learn from his mistakes.
I think the hate I deserve is enough for me to take. Yet I fail to see why I deserve that hate. Why I am scorned for my father's choices. No one ever sees I want to be myself instead of a second Lucius. I want the Malfoys to be respected again one day. Which means I'll have to hold my tongue for quite a while because no one here is sympathetic to 'my' views. I say mine in an odd way because I only talk how I am meant to. It hasn't really been until the last few years that I see rarely anyone agrees, that whilst at home it was my father who conditioned me to what was right and wrong – what was acceptable. Reality isn't what my father spoke of; he had his own little pureblood paradise that all deatheaters must believe in. Just because I recognise this doesn't mean I'll drop away from being nasty to halfbloods or mudbloods like Granger – I don't feel I'm wrong, just that I'm different from what I was raised to expect. Different in a way that's dangerous to be at this point in history.
And right now I can't be different – if I want to keep my head, or rather my soul.
As long as I'm here I'm safe from the ministry and from grubby deatheaters hands.
On one hand I'm an enemy as the son of Lucius and the other I'm a new recruit to something I don't care for. I don't want either, as if I have a choice. But neither can touch me staying at Hogwarts.
I decide that's my goal this year, as I watch the midget sized first years file timidly to their new house tables. My target, rather unambitiously, is merely to stay alive. For the heir of the previously well respected house of Malfoy, this is a shunt downwards in what I'm used to. But then again everything has gone downhill this year – due to Potter. Its just a technicality that my father was a deatheater and the 'marvelous' Harry Potter got him caught – I still consider Potter responsible. My loyalty after all is to my family, to the principle of revenge to those who dare humiliate any one of us. The fact that my father broke the law isn't something I care about. It's about family honour. Of course I won't be getting my revenge this year, I won't let anything jeopardise my goal, it would just be too good for Potter if I got myself killed trying to get at him.
I scowl at the first years who've sat next to me, they fill in the empty seats around me. They give me despicable looks, like the kind I'd give Potter and Co.
People aren't meant to give me that kind of look. I realise suddenly there's nothing I can do about it anymore, I can't run to my father and get their parents fired or anything equally devious. I just look back at them with as much menace as I can muster. Which isn't a lot.
Our house was taken over the summer, our accounts frozen. My mother is in constant tears these days. I doubt its because she misses my father. We have to fend for ourselves now, and there is no one left willing to help. No one we used to know cares.
In the end the ministry put us up in a safe house – though I'd consider it anything but.
My mother was left alone to her misery those months. I, however, was constantly questioned. They'd raided the house, looking for incriminating objects and communications with which to prove my father unequivocally guilty. And for everything they found or didn't find that they were looking for – I got interrogated one more time. Hours spent in a cold grey cell. Left there 'til I was ready to speak to them, as if I'd know the Malfoy secrets, as if my father would be stupid or trusting enough to have told me them. He knew me well, better than the ministry. They had no idea. So they made me sit and they'd shout, hoping to achieve something they didn't accept as impossible.
Another reason its good to be back at Hogwarts. Usually I don't care either way for being at school. Now I look forward to it for the silence I will get, solitude from the glares and anger of officials, who'd do nearly anything to get their answers.
There's also the fact here I might actually get some decent amount of food. The ministry provided some of course but not enough, to which I'd given my mother far more. She didn't know, I wouldn't let her see that I'd do such a thing. I wasn't one who wanted to show my weaknesses, even to my own mother. My loyalty to her, even though not a Malfoy by blood, was something my father had never been able to stamp out of me.
I smiled heartily at Dumbledore's announcement of the feast. It confused the first years around me quite considerably. I didn't care, I just shoveled as much food as I thought I could stomach onto my plate and yearned for the night to be over; with my hunger satisfied. To be lying in a warm familiar bed for once. With some hope of a dream where life was better, like I was used to. If I was lucky, I would never wake up.